As a self-described space nut, it's with great sadness that I look upon these images of the remaining members of the Space Shuttle fleet being picked apart and readied for their new homes in museums. The Atlantic has posted 35 breathtaking pictures of Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour.

Discovery will find a new home in the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum while Endeavour will make its way to the California Space Center. Atlantis will be sent to the Kennedy Space Center.

The first orbital mission of the Space Shuttle fleet kicked off with Columbia on April 12, 1981. Space Shuttle Atlantis made its final flight into space on July 8, 2011 and landed safely on July 21, 2011. In total, there were 135 missions and two tragic accidents (first with Challenger in 1986 resulting in the loss of its crew, and later with the Columbia and its crew in 2003).

quote: Just imagine if people would put the money they spend on things like sporting events towards space exploration, we would probably already be on Mars.

Imagine all you like, it's irrelevant. Those people are paying to be entertained, and they pretty much get what they want.

Real space flight/exploration (as opposed to movies and the like) isn't done for entertainment, and shouldn't be expected to entertain. Indeed, the ideal space mission is one with no drama, one that looks easy, where everything goes exactly as intended...and all fiction (science or otherwise) requires one or more individuals with one or more problems of some kind. Without its 'problem,' Apollo 13 would already have been just one more Lunar mission. (and I'm sure that all concerned, from the crew on down, would've preferred that, to a struggle for survival)

Sports, cigarettes, what have you, they make for interesting comparison, but don't ever think people would actually give up one for the other.

The sooner human space activity (not all of which will be exploration, or even more general research) gets to the point aviation did long ago (and maritime did centuries earlier) where it will exist completely apart from anything government does, the better. Even if the majority of it is 'boring' but profitable, self-supporting commercial activity that people will directly pay for.

And so, the rest of your post is essentially correct, except that there won't be any kind of 'shift.' People will still do and watch what they always do, space merely becomes one more arena of commerce of various kinds.

I think we are both thinking along the same lines. When I said "Imagine" I was trying to point out that if people had more interest in forwarding science and exploration than simply being entertained for a few seconds we would be much further along than we are. I definitely do not believe it is something that is going to happen, because the masses have been flocking to entertainment and ignoring the advancement of civilization since ancient times, just look at what crowds the Coliseum attracted in ancient Rome. Unless space is "exciting" like it was in the Apollo days, it will never be popular with the masses.